City looking at options for ‘managed encampment’ with basic services for homeless people By: Joyanne Pursaga Posted: 4:55 PM CST Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025

The City of Winnipeg will explore options for a temporary “managed encampment to housing” site, aimed at ensuring homeless people receive basic services and supports at a dedicated location.

On Thursday, city council cast a 14-2 vote to order a staff report on the feasibility of running a pilot project on such a site in the spring and summer.

“It’s really critical that there’s a place and a space where (we) can try to encourage people into addiction treatment and also help them with housing,” said Daniel McIntyre councillor Cindy Gilroy, who raised the successful motion to study the idea.

“It’s supposed to be… (safer) for the people that are in encampments.”

“This idea is not to keep people in the state that they’re in. It is to encourage them and it’s supposed to be… (safer) for the people that are in encampments.”

The staff report is expected to offer a list of potential locations for the managed encampment site, describe how it could operate, estimate how many people could live in it and explore its impact on safety.

Staff are also expected to provide a cost estimate for providing two large metal garbage bins with regular city pickup, three portable washrooms and “modest” maintenance and cleaning service for the property.

The city will also ask the province how it could participate, such as by funding and delivering supports for encampment residents, such as income assistance, addictions treatment, mental-health services and housing.

The idea was initially proposed by the St. Boniface Street Links outreach organization. Street Links said people who stay in the space would be required to work on a housing plan.

Gilroy said the model would aim to discourage people from staying at the site on a more permanent basis.

“The whole idea is to get people housed,” she said.

Councillors Janice Lukes (Waverley West) and Evan Duncan (Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood) voted against pursuing the idea.

Lukes said the concept wouldn’t succeed without provincial support and is being proposed at a time the senior government is pursuing other major projects, such as opening a safe consumption site, operating a space that can detain highly intoxicated people and funding a resource site at the Millennium Library.

“The city can’t do it without provincial support.”

“The city can’t do it without provincial support… I’m not seeing any interest from the provincial government at all,” she said.

Lukes said the pilot project would likely require too many resources from the city, while municipal staff are already quite busy providing other homelessness and encampment initiatives.

Duncan said creating an additional encampment site could attract crime and drug activity and put the vulnerable people who live in it at risk.

“It also doesn’t address the issue of (people who don’t) want to be in a managed encampment site. Now we’d have a managed encampment site and other encampment sites around the city…. I just don’t think that the managed encampment site is a good model to follow,” he said.

Duncan said the site could also strain city services, including fire and paramedic response, he said.

“There’s a whole slew of issues that come with setting up a potential tent city. And, let’s be honest, that’s what it’s going to turn into,” he said.

Mayor Scott Gillingham said he supports studying the idea but is concerned setting up a sanctioned encampment could lead some people to live outdoors longer.

“I certainly do have concerns… the goal is to not have encampments, it’s to get people out of encampments (and) into housing with the supports that are required,” said Gillingham.

The focus on connecting people with housing is a key reason to at least study the idea, the mayor said.

“All of us working in any aspect of addressing homelessness have to be focused on getting people out of encampments and into housing,” he said.

The staff report is expected in about four months.

Meanwhile, the city confirmed Thursday that it has now cleaned up 11 encampment sites, due to its decision to ban them from many public spaces, such as schools and playgrounds. The city did not share the locations of the remediated sites, reveal how many occupants were relocated or detail the type of shelter or housing people moved into.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

X: @joyanne_pursaga